Notorious - Districts (American Online, 3/15/2025)

[I ran this back 2 weeks later for the APAC Online District. After an extremely terrible and exhausting day at work and starting off 0-2, it became the first tournament I've ever dropped from.]

After a 6 year hiatus from the game, I knew for sure what I was playing as corp, but I'd been struggling to find a runner that I clicked with (especially in my favorite faction, Shaper), so I didn't know what to bring to this event. That changed when I read through a Standard metagame primer and saw "Sable Deep Dive" listed as an archetype. Sable was one of the three I'd tried building in the past couple months alongside Zahya and Loup, and Deep Dive is just a better version of one of my favorite cards. I love a quest, and I quite enjoy the mark mechanic, so I looked up some lists. There were only a couple lists so I went with the one that ran a full playset instead of just 2. I only had time for a single practice game and I really tried to find some swaps to make the list my own, but going through every single Criminal card in the format, I couldn't find a single one that I preferred to how any card in the original list performed in my practice game.

2-1 in Swiss

• Round 1 - Loss v tjaketheman on Restoring Humanity
  • Ability fires: 3
  • Got lucky mark rolls for the first 3 turns, getting 3 free looks at an un-iced R&D, but without finding any agendas. Turn 1, I checked a remote and saw a Clearinghouse, but didn't want to go broke trashing it and wanted the corp to spend time advancing it first. Turn 4, after adding an upgrade to the server, the advancements came so I figured I'd check it and faceplanted into a Cloud Eater. With only 3 in hand and 2 installed cards, the encounter left me with nothing but my credits and a now pressing need to trash it, which meant certain death from the upgrade.
• Round 4 - Win v Ketzol on AgInfusion
  • Ability fires: 7
  • I played this one very cautiously, because obviously so many of my cards care about successful runs on specific servers, facechecking with regular runs and saving events for servers with rezzed ice. Turn 5, I snagged a Nisel off the top of R&D, so went in for a full dive turn and got a Bacterial. Over the next few turns, the corp scored one of their own (followed by some Charlotte shenanigans) off a La Costa in a well-protected remote while I built up my board. When a third card hit the remote, I decided to take a turn to build up to contesting it, but started with a poke into HQ and pulled the third Bacterial.
• Round 6 - Win v CatWithAn@ on Pravdivost Consulting
  • Ability fires: 3
  • This match was a wild one. Other than the econ and draw engines, I had to read every card a few times because I'd never seen it before or had forgotten what it did years ago. I didn't really know what the corp was up to, so I played slowly, poking here and there, building up, and digging for my Deep Dives. The first one saw 0 points but I pulled a False Lead setting it up. I got hit with tags in response and then on my turn I figured I'd clear them at the end so started running with a couple bold ones. Turns out the R&D ice I'd been waltzing through all game was a piranha waiting for a tag to go after. I pushed through and then met a jaguar on HQ with another False Lead as my reward. Luckily, both the fish and the cat missed my Deep Dive, so I got to play it and steal the third False Lead and my first 2 pointer of the game. I had to float the tag, but cleared it next turn before running a facedown that had been installed on the Oppo turn, which turned out to be another single point that gave me another tag to clear. If I'd checked the twin facedown from the same turn, I'd have won then and there but I opted for the clear. The corp responded by scoring out a Headline that had been slowly building up behind some ice but instead of clicking back the Thinktank, opted for protecting the one on the board with a Giordano. I took the next turn to draw up and clear the tag, and then when a third card hit the remote I decided to go for it, figuring one of them had to be an agenda by now and guessing the others were the Giordano I'd seen in hand and a Holo Man I'd seen on a dive, and I wasn't sure if there was some sort of combo that could get the corp the last 4 points if I passed back. I flipped my way into HQ so that I could finally install my ace in the hole that I'd been holding for 5 turns and have it active for the remote.

I really enjoyed playing the deck and hope Elevation brings some new juice for it to offset the losses from some of the major hitters rotating.